Lost & Found

Feature Article from Hemmings Classic Car

Continental Martino
Russell Gilbert of Richmond, Virginia, always kept his eye out for cars in customers' backyards when he was laying down flooring, and about 10 years ago that habit paid off with a highly unusual shortened two-door 1964 Lincoln Continental which he's been attempting to positively identify ever since.
It's not unusual to see Continentals of this vintage shortened into two-doors by backyard bodymen, but this one features a couple of unique characteristics not endemic to a home-built car. First, the doors appear to have been lengthened to give the Continental a more proportioned look (versus retaining the short four-door doors)--it's something one would expect from a coachbuilder or experienced customizer. Second, what appears to be a coachbuilder's nameplate is located on the front fenders, but the name on the plate, Martino, hasn't come up in any of our references on coachbuilders so far.
Was there indeed a coachbuilder named Martino who converted this Continental into its current configuration? If so, who ordered it, and were any others like it built?
Thunderbowl Comet, Part 37
We admit to being a little obsessed with the Thunderbowl Comet. The story on it has been fairly well fleshed-out -- built by Harlan Fengler, used in the 1936 film Speed, purportedly prepared for land-speed racing but never (to our knowledge) campaigned (see HCC #66, #85, and #87). We're just compelled to track down every last detail on it we can, and reader Leon Dixon has given us another morsel to chew over with this photo of the Comet in much better days, dated 1943.
"As I have it here, originally the wheels were knock-off wire wheels covered with coned sheetmetal skins, and there was a distinct grille that I do not see in the photo in the December issue," Leon wrote. "Color was also obviously darker."
We ran the photo by Ron Carbaugh, who confirmed that the man standing on the left is a young Harlan Fengler, though he's not sure who the other two men are. Anybody out there recognize them?
Only Used Once
Our call for unique and noteworthy cars was answered recently by Hershel Murphy of Indianapolis, who wrote to us with photos and a brief story about his 1922 Studebaker children's hearse.
The story starts with the Miller family in Brazil, Indiana, who owned both a funeral home and a Studebaker dealership. Still fearing another event similar to the influenza epidemic of 1918, the family decided to add a children's hearse to the funeral home's fleet, and sent off a brand-new 1922 Studebaker (likely a sedan) to the Knightstown Coach Works in Knightstown, Indiana, to have the custom body--complete with a 52-inch casket compartment, leaded glass windows, red velvet upholstery and white paint--installed on the Studebaker chassis.
According to a subsequent owner, David Neitzel, the hearse was only used once, then stored indoors from 1934 until 1979 and outdoors until 1988. It fell into disrepair while outside, but Neitzel restored it and proceeded to show it over the next couple decades. Hershel bought it in 2008.

This article originally appeared in the March, 2012 issue of Hemmings Classic Car.